NYS Governor's Awards for Pollution Prevention - IBM Endicott IBM - Endicott Plant, Microelectronics Division Background Invented by John Glenning

At its plant located in Endicott, IBM develops and manufactures sophisticated electronic

circuit boards and chip carriers for its own needs and for sale to other computer companies.

This IBM Microelectronics Division facility consists of four million square feet of building

space housing process development, manufacturing and other operations. The facility

employs more than 5,000 people in Endicott.

Methodologies and Procedures

Circuit board production is based on photolithography and requires a complex series of

chemical, mechanical and electronic processes. Raw materials include copper, epoxy,

various chemical solutions for plating, etching and stripping of metals and photosensitive

films, water for rinsing and energy to provide process heating, cooling and ventilation. The

entire process generates significant amounts of wastewater and hazardous waste.

A major part of the production is copper plating. Traditionally, the copper plating steps had

been performed for most products using an older acid-copper plater (ACP) plating

technique that required vertical dipping of large racks holding parts into big open-top tanks

of chemicals and rinse waters. The copper plating operation requires several multi-step

series through different tanks and chemistries to achieve the desired results.

The older process produced waste and scrap caused by "drag-out" of chemicals from one

tank to the next and by the inadvertent plating of copper onto the racks and fixtures holding

the product. Large volumes of evaporative waste were also produced from the open tank

design used for plating, etching, rinsing and drying the circuit components.

The improvement implemented at IBM's Endicott plant in 1996 consists of a new copper

plating process referred to as the Thin Panel Plater (TPP). This more efficient and less

polluting process supplanted the older ACP technology for many of IBM's circuited

products. Conceptually, the major difference is that the new TPP uses horizontal processing

of parts on conveyorized rollers in place of vertical dip tanks.

Benefits

The horizontal configuration of the TPP lends itself to a number of environmental

improvements. Benefits include a completely enclosed process with smaller chemical tanks

and lower ventilation requirements; use of a more efficient "fluid head" technology for

chemical solutions and rinse waters, elimination of racks and the associated waste of

copper which inadvertently plated on the racks, reduced levels of drag-out, reduced rinse

water requirements and reduced evaporative losses. In addition, the new process

incorporated several other techniques resulting in more environmentally friendly

chemistries. Specific environmental benefits include the following:

Rinse waters reduced by 75 percent or 30,000 tons per year through the use of flood

bars/fluid head techniques instead of vertical dip tanks and vertical spray nozzles. Use of

"fluid head" consumes only one-half gallon per minute versus the 3 to 5 gallon per

minute consumption of the older immersion tanks and spray heads.

Plating bath efficiency improved by 20 percent, primarily as a result of eliminating vertical

racks and associate rack stripping steps. The result is less drag out and reduced plating

on fixtures. This efficiency is gained across each of several chemical processing

stations, including cleaners 1 and 2, persulfate microetch, sulfuric acid pre-dip, activator

baths, reducer bath, electroless copper bath, acid dip, and several acid copper baths.

The total waste reduction is estimated to be 60 tons per year.

Reuse of spent micro etch bath for maintenance reduced waste by 55 tons per year. The

spent persulfate solution from the microetch station is saved for reuse during weekly

maintenance to cleaning or etching of excess copper that plates onto interior tank walls

and fixtures.

Toxicity reductions were achieved by converting a previously hazardous and corrosive

activator bath to a neutral activator chemistry.

Toxicity reduction was achieved by electrifying a plating bath, which enables use of lower

concentrations of copper, hydroxide and formaldehyde.

Energy savings of more than 500,000 kilowatt hours were realized as a result of

conveyer efficiency compared to the old hoist system and reduced process ventilation for

the enclosed process design.

Overall process efficiency was improved by using chemical totes instead of 55-gallon

drums, realizing a savings of more than $20,000 annually.

As Electronic circuitry density increases, DI Water Rinsing needs to increase by 2

orders of magnitude to meet product reliability requirements.

Developed DI water rinsing head (fluid head) which improved rinsing quality by one

order of magnitude and reduced DI water consumption by two orders of magnitude

resulting in a US Patent.

This was a brain-storm by myself and an operator. We changed the rinsing from

spraying to cross-product.

This significantly improved rinsing and product reliability.

This resulted in a US Patent (US Patent 5063951)

http://www.dec.ny.gov/public/21702.html

INVENTED: 1987

US PATENT 5063951 ISSUED: July 19, 1990